How to Increase Biodiversity on your Homestead

Spring has finally arrived in Maine, and we’re boosting biodiversity on our land by planting rare native wildflowers!

Come walk with us to plant seeds, forage for edible and medicinal plants/mushrooms, and see what the melting snow has revealed. We were surprised to find a vintage trapline, amongst other signs of the previous homesteads since this plot was first settled in the 1950s.

Looking forward to more warm weather!

#Maine #Homestead #Spring

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Good morning or good afternoon. I think it’s afternoon now. Yeah. We’re back on our land. Finally, the snow has melted. Finally, we can get back here. Um, I’ve already gotten busy today. I am 19 weeks pregnant now. Not letting it stop me. Let me show you what I’ve done. I got a bunch of ramp seeds, otherwise known as wild leaks um from Prairie Moon Nursery, which is one of my favorite seed sources because they’re uh they specialize in native seeds. Seeds are native to North America specifically. Um I have a a ton of seeds I need to put down today, but the most important one for me at least was a wild uh wild league ramp. And um I put them on a hill. Let me turn you around so you can see. So, I have this hill here and I made one, two, three little patches and uh I sewed a couple seeds about for these two I sold sewed a couple seeds about two inches apart in grid patterns and then up there I kind of just disturbed the soil and then just kind of mixed it in. So we’ll see which one works better. Um there’s a game trail going down that way and the trail is marked off a little further down um just cuz it’s not as clear once you get down there. But there’s uh there’s also a bunch of trees trees with chaga on them down there that I’ve marked uh on our map. We want to make a foraging trail going down this side of our property. Um kind of like that way. I’m going to keep going. I’m going to grab Eric. I forgot my gun. He brought his. So, I don’t like to go in the woods without a gun. So, I’m going to bring him with me and we’re going to go down the trail and see what we can see. Just found this. I think this is probably Lykan. I don’t know what kind, but it looks like a heart. Look how cute that is. This I’m not surprised they’ve been all winter long on top of that snow, and that snow’s been keeping it frozen and preserved. This is what Eric’s talking about. We’re going to see so so much deer food. I mean, I see all these piles of big big like look. It’s just everywhere. It was everywhere. Like, you could see just how many deer. If you’re old enough to remember Chipoy commercials, bet you bite a chip. You can’t bite into the chip without hitting a chocolate chip. You can’t walk through these woods without stepping on a pile of chips. And look, look at this. It looks like they’re broadcast seating. This is insane. All out here. I have never seen this much deer poop in one place. All of that. I mean, this right here is that’s a game trail. All day circle or better of just covered in poop. This is why this is why the day that I came out here by myself deer hunting, I was posted up right over there on right further on that hill. Oh, right there on right here on that log sitting on that log cuz the chaga is right over there. Yeah. On that not tree. Yeah, that right there is a chaga tree. You can kind of see the black blob growing out of it. But yeah, it was posted up right up there because I saw all of this deer sign and it was fresh at the time. That was uh I think that was Thanksgiving week. But yet come November, the deer are gone. They’re like ghosts. They’re gone. There’s no sign of them anywhere. It’s frustrating. All right. So, this is Dutchman’s Bridges Dentra Cucularia. It’s native to the United States, and I think this is a great spot for it. It’s in a damp kind of low lowland type area. It’s not quite the wetland, and they like a lot of shade, so either full or part shade. And that’s pretty much what this is. So, going to put some of that down. cuz I’ll have to clean this out right here at some point from that side. Yeah, I’ll just make it a cleaner trail. You can see where this tree basically came out of that hole. Yeah, has a big depression here. You can can’t really do that. You can kind of tell there’s a big depression there. That’s from this tree up. But if I can clean this section up, get that back in its hole and kind of smooth this out. Get rid of this one fine. We’ll have this will basically get us back on a more open trail. Yeah. Right down the border. I think you could make go right down the border. It just needs cleaned up a bit. I think you can make quick work of it with a chainsaw. Oh, yeah. It’ll be It is a on the uh on the agenda chainsaw project. Yes. One of the many chainsaw projects. Yeah. We can get down to where the water’s edge is. I can plant some jewel and uh yeah, we can make our way back and progressively plant stuff that doesn’t need as much water. This ridge line, that’s an old f Oh, I wonder if this ridge line is where the uh where the fence was. The electric fence line was. Yeah. I don’t know if it was electric if they’ ran the power to back here, but it was definitely fencing back here. Yeah. And if you figure that fencing was up 50, 60 years ago. Yeah. And then just let go. It would have collected a lot of debris. You know what I mean? It would have collected a lot of things up against it. Would have fell down. Would have built up over time. Yeah. And uh Yeah. This is This is in the tree. The fencing is in the tree. Oh my word. Yeah. I just pulled it out. Look. That’s crazy. It grew into the tree. Yeah. Oh, there’s more of that fence. More fencing. Yeah. So this is the like the wire mat. This is really not coming across. There we go. They could have rolled that out and then it looks like they would have put the barb wire across the top. Yeah. I wonder if that’s the that’s the fencing that went along that this ridge this natural ridge up here. Yeah. So this is where it really drops into the wetland. Yeah. You just It’s just It’s sticky in there. This is This from here on needs to get cleaned up still. Yeah. As you can see, We got some fresh blow down up in here, but it was also it was the most direct way to get to a very open and accessible edge. Not all of the edge out there on the beaver pond is accessible, but this was Yeah, get to the end. I think we shared our struggles on YouTube last fall when we were trying to get down there. Look at these beautiful red cedars. Look at that. Oh my god, that color is just beautiful. We’re so blessed to have these beautiful cedars on our land. Absolutely incredible trees. Here we are. This definitely looks like it was logged. Oh, it definitely is. This is like You can see the the tire tracks. I love it back here. Look at that. This is beautiful. That’s a rock with a cedar tree growing on it. Oh, roots wrap around it. Look at that. See, your tree just growing right over the rock and then just reaching down into the earth. Incredible. It’s a beautiful tree, too. My goodness, look how straight that is. You can make a ship mast out of that. All right, let’s keep going. Find some good jewel weed spots. So, in the I think it was in the fall, we we just walked across all that cuz it was dry. Yeah. But now water’s up to here. So, I think I’m going to pick a spot probably right here and plant the jewel. Um cuz it does like a high water table. Find it growing not in standing water but next to standing water. So, Yeah, I think somewhere in this area. All right. I think I found a spot right right here seems like a good spot for jewel weed cuz there’s like a little trench right there and they like to be on the edge of of the water table. Yeah. So, like Yeah, that Yeah, that whole bank I think would be great. All right, so this is the jewel. It also called spotted touch or not. It’s in the impatience family. Uh, so yeah, it needs a wet environment, full sun to part shade, and this area is a doesn’t have as thick of a canopy as the rest of the woods. So, I think this is a good spot. There’s what the seeds look like. You can see them. Oh, yeah. [Applause] All right, one more down. That was like a job on all. Wow, that’s pretty cool. Oh yeah, that’s definitely a room a rum in it all day long. Yeah, you got more chief in the back. Yeah, that’s a baby deer. little one here. All right, we’re making our way back up towards the road up to Dryer Land. Next up is uh Jack in the Pole Pit. So, we’re going to find a moist but not too wet spot. It’s a wetland plant, but I’ve never seen it growing in standing water, but I’ve definitely seen it growing in wetlands not too far from standing water. This is Chaga growing on this absolutely gorgeous yellow birch. It’s not a uh not a huge chunk of chaga, but very goodlook chunk I have to say myself. Nice harvestable chunk. Is a nice harvestable chunk, but I’m going to leave it be because we have a much bigger chunk up closer to camp. Okay, so we’re This is pretty muddy here, but it’s not flooded. And the trail comes down here. And I’m thinking this spot right here, right between these two trees. I could definitely see Jack in the Pulpit growing there. Yeah, this is Jack in the Pulpit. That’s what the seeds look like. Interesting looking seed. It’s plants like this that make me wonder what kind of life forms exist on other planets. Oh, I just found some amber jelly roll fungus. Jiggle jiggle. I love this stuff. You can actually you can harvest this and eat it. It has a lot of nutrients in it. What I like to do is I dehydrate it, which is not hard. You just leave it out and it turns into this like crispy husk and then uh you can reconstitute it in uh like lemon juice or you know any kind of flavor you like with a little bit of sugar and it turns into kind of like a really nice chewy candy. It’s really good. Or you could put it in soup. Um, Asian cultures like to put this in various soups. I just like to stare at it when it jiggles. Check this out. That is an old trapping line. It is been out here for a while. It’s not old old, but it’s pretty old. I know. That’s pretty cool. That would be cool to take home. It’s coming home today. Look at that. That’s a cool find. Damn. Still work. Still working. [Music] Somebody used the twig to set it off. Yeah. Okay, that’s it. Dup [Music] trap 13T West Point, Mississippi. Wow. Made in Korea. I was walking by. I was like, “What the heck is that?” Thought it was like turtle eggs or something. But these are puffball mushrooms. Probably from the fall, I’m guessing. And the reason why they’re called puff balls is I don’t know if you can see that they don’t have any spores left, but there we go. They puff out the spores at the top and that’s how the spores spread. I’ll have to mark this on uh mark this on my map because they’re good eats. They’re real good eats. I forgot about this daffodil patch. This is like right in front of where we want to build the house. That’s a fire pit. The makeshift fire pit that we built the that Eric built the first night we stayed here right after we bought it. I’m going to plant this fireweed. It grows all over northern Maine. It loves it here. And as you can see, it needs full sun. It can tolerate some shade, but I’ve never seen it growing in the shade. So, this area gets a lot of sun. So, I think I’m going to put it along this walkway here. It’s kind of on the edge there so it’s easy to access. Fireweed is edible and it makes an absolutely delicious jelly. It also makes a really delicious kombucha. It’s one of my favorite things to put in a second fermentation of kombucha. It’s incredible. The seeds are like seeds are like grains of sand. So, I’m just going to scatter this and let the wind take it. I think that’s it for the day. We still have Ru anemone to plant and also Solomon seal. I couldn’t decide on where to put them today. So, I think we’ll just come back another day, maybe tomorrow, and uh figure it out. I think it’ll help to come back on a day when it’s actually sunny outside so we can see what gets full sun in the middle of the day. That’ll be really helpful for those two particular plants because they tend to like a little more sun than the other plants we put down today. Thanks for joining me. It’s been a fun day in the woods. Even if it’s raining, that’s all right. We have rain gear. Uh, see you later.